Disinformation » Osama Bin Laden

The Attraction Of Conspiracy Theories

Good German — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:03:42 +0000

Author: Sodacan (CC)

Distrust and paranoia about government has a long history, and the feeling that there is a conspiracy of elites can lead to suspicion for authorities and the claims they make. For some, the attraction of conspiracy theories is so strong that it leads them to endorse entirely contradictory beliefs, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).

People who endorse conspiracy theories see authorities as fundamentally deceptive. The conviction that the “official story” is untrue can lead people to believe several alternative theories-despite contradictions among them. “Any conspiracy theory that stands in opposition to the official narrative will gain some degree of endorsement from someone who holds a conpiracist worldview,” according to Michael Wood, Karen Douglas and Robbie Sutton of the University of Kent.

To see if conspiracy views were strong enough to lead to inconsistencies, the researchers asked 137 college students about the death of Princess Diana. The more people thought there “was an official campaign by the intelligence service to assassinate Diana,” the more they also believed that “Diana faked her own death to retreat into isolation.” Of course, Diana cannot be simultaneously dead and alive.

The researchers wanted to know if the contradictory beliefs were due to suspicion of authorities, so they asked 102 college students about the death of Osama bin Laden (OBL). People who believed that “when the raid took place, OBL was already dead,” were significantly more likely to also believe that “OBL is still alive.” Since bin Laden is not Schrödinger’s cat, he must either be alive or dead. The researchers found that the belief that the “actions of the Obama administration indicate that they are hiding some important or damaging piece of information about the raid” was responsible for the connection between the two conspiracy theories. Conspiracy belief is so potent that it will lead to belief in completely inconsistent ideas…

[continues at ScienceDaily]

What The Government Told Gizmodo About Osama Bin Laden’s Body

HAL9000 — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 04:27:14 +0000

Amazing read. Sam Biddle writes on Gizmodo:

Months ago, I asked the Pentagon for its visual records of Osama bin Laden’s sea burial under the Freedom of Information Act. Today, I received a thick packet of No— a complete denial that any records exist. Read it.

The core of the response is this: the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, United States Special Operations Command, and the Department of the Navy all had their records searched. Nothing. Admiral Mike Mullen’s email was scanned. Nothing. The Pentagon claims not a single person aboard the USS Carl Vinson, where Bin Laden’s remains were disposed of, took a single picture. Not a single email from the ship makes reference to photo or video. Essentially: nobody in the military has evidence. So did these things ever exist? If so, they’re in a filing cabinet at the CIA, where they’ll be safe for the rest of time.

‘SEAL Target Geronimo’ Claims Bin Laden Kill Mission Took 90 Seconds

ralph — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 23:10:46 +0000

Chuck Pfarrer, a former Navy SEAL and author of SEAL Target Geronimo, offers a different account of those events in early May 2011 on The Dylan Ratigan Show:

When War is Promoted As a Remedy for Terror

Camron Wiltshire — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 02:07:26 +0000

Anthony Hall writes on Salem News:

In early May President Barack Obama announced his administration’s most dramatic commemoration of this, the tenth-anniversary year of the 9/11 debacle. He boasted to the world that his government had murdered in Pakistan Osama bin Laden, who the US president described as “al-Qaeda’s leader and symbol.” “The death of bin Laden,” Obama declared, “marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al-Qaeda.”

In this military operation “Geronimo” was the code name used to identify bin Laden or his impersonator. The skeletal remains of Geronimo’s head form part a key part of the Bush clan’s family lore with its deep intergenerational connection to Yale University’s Skull and Bones Society. Skull and Bones is not a myth, but its secret rituals are legendary. As is well documented, Yale’s Skull and Bones Society has been an important seeding nursery for the national security state, but especially the CIA. Like many old fortunes in New England and New York, the money to start Skull and Bones came primarily from the smuggling of East India Company opium into China.

The alleged grave robber of Geronimo’s skull, Prescott Bush, is in the unique position of siring two presidential offspring, namely his son, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his grandson, George Walker Bush. It was Bush Jr. who put a price on bin Laden’s head after 9/11. It was Obama who came ten years later to claim the political bounty?

The Strange Case of Benazir Bhutto’s Claims and Osama bin Laden’s Death

Good German — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 00:00:36 +0000

Jennifer Briney wrote back in 2008 on Little Country Lost:

In a November 2, 2007 interview, less than two months before she would be assassinated, Benazir Bhutto was asked by reporter David Frost of Al-Jazeera English about a letter that she had sent to Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf. The letter outlined who she believed should be investigated in the event of her assassination. While giving her answer, she listed as one of the suspects a “key figure in security … a former military officer in Pakistan” who had dealings with, among others, “Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin-Laden.”

If that name, Omar Shieikh, sounds familiar it’s because he was a key figure in some huge stories between 1999 and 2002. His full name is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and multiple variations of those names are used to describe him including Omar Sheikh and Saeed Sheikh. Here’s how you may have heard of him:

In 1999, Indian Airlines flight 814 was hijacked by Pakistani nationals. In return for the hostages, the hijackers demanded India release the leaders of the ISI (the Pakistani version of the CIA) funded group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. One of these leaders was Omar Sheikh.

In the months before 9/11, using the alias “Mustafa Mohammad Ahmed”, Omar Sheikh transferred at least $100,000 to Mohammad Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers.

Omar Sheikh was sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Having trouble wrapping your head around this? I was too, so I did a little research. First, let’s see if this revelation that Omar Sheikh murdered Osama bin-Laden is even possible…

Who–and What–Are Behind the “Official History” of the Bin Laden Raid?

Good German — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:37:31 +0000

Russ Baker writes for WhoWhatWhy:

The establishment media just keep getting worse. They’re further and further from good, tough investigative journalism, and more prone to be pawns in complicated games that affect the public interest in untold ways. A significant recent example is The New Yorker’s vaunted August 8 exclusive on the vanquishing of Osama bin Laden.

The piece, trumpeted as the most detailed account to date of the May 1 raid in Abbottabad Pakistan, was an instant hit. “Got the chills half dozen times reading @NewYorker killing bin Laden tick tock…exquisite journalism,” tweeted the digital director of the PBS show Frontline. The author, freelancer Nicholas Schmidle, was quickly featured on the Charlie Rose show, an influential determiner of “chattering class” opinion. Other news outlets rushed to praise the story as “exhaustive,” “utterly compelling,” and on and on.

To be sure, it is the kind of granular, heroic story that the public loves, that generates follow-up bestsellers and movie options. The takedown even has a Hollywood-esque code name: “Operation Neptune’s Spear”

Here’s the introduction to the mission commander, full of minute details that help give it a ring of authenticity and the most intimate reportorial access:

James, a broad-chested man in his late thirties, does not have the lithe swimmer’s frame that one might expect of a SEAL—he is built more like a discus thrower. That night, he wore a shirt and trousers in Desert Digital Camouflage, and carried a silenced Sig Sauer P226 pistol, along with extra ammunition; a CamelBak, for hydration; and gel shots, for endurance. He held a short-barrel, silenced M4 rifle. (Others SEALs had chosen the Heckler & Koch MP7.) A “blowout kit,” for treating field trauma, was tucked into the small of James’s back. Stuffed into one of his pockets was a laminated gridded map of the compound. In another pocket was a booklet with photographs and physical descriptions of the people suspected of being inside. He wore a noise-cancelling headset, which blocked out nearly everything besides his heartbeat.

On and on went the “tick-tock.” Yet as Paul Farhi, a Washington Post reporter, noted, that narrative was misleading in the extreme, because the New Yorker reporter never actually spoke to James—nor to a single one of James’s fellow SEALs (who have never been identified or photographed–even from behind–to protect their identity.) Instead, every word of Schmidle’s narrative was provided to him by people who were not present at the raid. Complains Farhi:

…a casual reader of the article wouldn’t know that; neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story. Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong impression that he spoke with them directly.

That didn’t trouble New Yorker editor David Remnick, according to Farhi:

Remnick says he’s satisfied with the accuracy of the account. “The sources spoke to our fact-checkers,” he said. “I know who they are.”

But we don’t.

On a story of this gravity, should we automatically join in with the huzzahs because it has the imprimatur of America’s most respected magazine? Or would we be wise to approach it with caution?

Navy SEAL Team 6 Members Killed in Afghanistan Helicopter Crash Not Osama bin Laden’s Killers

bluemana — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:03:06 +0000

So official sources say. A dramatic loss of life to one of America’s elite military forces. Christine Haverkamp reports on the AP via KTLV:

U.S. officials tell the Associated Press that they believe that none of the Navy SEALs who died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan had participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, although they were from the same unit that carried out the bin Laden mission.

Sources say that more than 20 Navy SEALs were among those lost in the crash in Afghanistan.

The operators from SEAL Team Six were flown by a regular Army crew. That’s according to AP military sources.

Another source says the team was thought to include 22 SEALs, three Air Force air controllers, seven Afghan Army troops, a dog and his handler, and a civilian interpreter, plus the helicopter crew.

The sources thought this was the largest single loss of life ever for SEAL Team Six, known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

More: AP via KTLV

CIA Held Fake Vaccination Drive To Get Osama’s Children’s DNA

JacobSloan — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 18:50:45 +0000

A-ha! For years I’ve been telling everyone that so-called “vaccinations” are a government scam to harvest our DNA (and render us autistic to boot). The Guardian reports on a beyond-bizarre CIA plot:

The CIA organised a fake vaccination program in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader’s family. A senior Pakistani doctor was recruited to organize the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic.

DNA from any of the Bin Laden children in the compound could be compared with a sample from his sister, who died in Boston in 2010, to provide evidence that the family was present. It is not known exactly how the doctor hoped to get DNA from the vaccinations, although nurses could have been trained to withdraw some blood in the needle after administrating the drug.

The vaccination plan was conceived after American intelligence officers tracked an al-Qaida courier, known as Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti, to what turned out to be Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound last summer. The agency monitored the compound by satellite and surveillance from a local CIA safe house in Abbottabad, but wanted confirmation that Bin Laden was there before mounting a risky operation inside another country.

The doctor went to Abbottabad in March, saying he had procured funds to give free vaccinations for hepatitis B. Bypassing the management of the Abbottabad health services, he paid generous sums to low-ranking local government health workers, who took part in the operation without knowing about the connection to Bin Laden. Health visitors in the area were among the few people who had gained access to the Bin Laden compound in the past, administering polio drops to some of the children.

A nurse known as Bakhto, whose full name is Mukhtar Bibi, managed to gain entry to the Bin Laden compound to administer the vaccines. According to several sources, the doctor, who waited outside, told her to take in a handbag that was fitted with an electronic device. It is not clear what the device was, or whether she left it behind. It is also not known whether the CIA managed to obtain any Bin Laden DNA, although one source suggested the operation did not succeed.

Salvage Diver Plans To Recover Bin Laden’s Body From Sea

Pelliciari — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:34:47 +0000

Photo: Hamid Mir (CC)

After the disposal of Osama Bin Laden’s body at sea many were skeptical, including Bill Warren. While everyone else was talking up their conspiracy theories Warren decided there was only one way to know the truth, go down there and get him. Via TIME:

Talk is cheap. That’s why Bill Warren won’t elaborate on his conspiracy theory regarding bin Laden’s death. Instead, he’s taking action. The Fallbrook, Calif. salvage diver is planning a mission to retrieve bin Laden’s body from the bottom of the Arabian Sea.

Having been in the business of salvage diving for more than 30 years, Warren is aware of the dangers and difficulties of rescue missions. The body, he says, “will look like a cigar at the bottom of the ocean.” It’s a mission that will require some heavy – and costly – technology. So is the proof worth the purchase?

To Warren, that’s affirmative. Casting aside all money concerns, the 59-year-old Warren is seeking to confirm bin Laden’s death and sea burial. “I want to prove to myself and probably 50% of the world that he was killed,” he says. Indeed, Warren has found a network of other skeptics: he’s rounded up donors from across the U.S. and as far away as London to help fund the mission, which could cost up to $400,000.

[Continues at TIME]

Media Roots Radio: Osama Propaganda, Police Power, GOP & Obama’s 2012 Run-up

Abby Martin — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:48:40 +0000

Via Media Roots Radio:

This episode covers new Bin Laden propaganda, the recent ruling giving police the power to break into homes without warrants and the media circus surrounding the GOP and Obama’s election run-up for 2012.

The above timeline is interactive. Scroll through it to find out more about the show’s music and to resources mentioned during the broadcast. To see a larger version of the timeline with clickable resources go to the soundcloud link below the player.

If you would like to directly download the podcast click the down arrow icon on the right of the soundcloud display. To hide the comments to enable easier rewind and fast forward, click on the icon on the very bottom right.

Florida Man Angers His Church By Asking Them to Pray for Soul of Osama Bin Laden (Video)

bluemana — Wed, 18 May 2011 20:42:14 +0000

Brian Hamacher reports for NBC Miami:

The South Florida man whose prayer for Osama bin Laden caused a holy mess at mass this past Sunday is speaking out to defend the bizarre benediction.

Henry Borga paid $10 to put bin Laden’s name on the prayer list at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church in West Palm Beach over the weekend, according to WPTV. The name appeared with four others under the mass intentions section in the church’s pamphlet, with a cross next to bin Laden’s name.

While putting the name on the list has caused quite a hubbub, Borga, who said he also prayed for the victims of 9/11, said it was about mercy. “He was a very bad man but he deserved to be punished in life, not by losing his life,” Borga said. “He needs forgiveness and compassion from God.”

Was Osama Bin Laden A US Prisoner Before Being Killed?

Pelliciari — Mon, 16 May 2011 21:05:04 +0000

The Times Of India reports:

Al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden was a prisoner in US custody for “sometime” before he was killed by the American military, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said.

“I have exact information that bin Laden was held by the American military for sometime… until the day they killed him he was a prisoner held by them,” the hardline president said in a live interview on Iranian state television.

“Please pay attention. This is important. He was held by them for sometime. They made him sick and while he was sick they killed him,” Ahmadinejad added.

He accused US President Barack Obama for announcing the al-Qaida leader’s death for “political gain.”

“What the US president has done is for domestic political gain. In other words, they killed him for Mr Obama’s election and now they are seeking to replace him with someone else,” Ahmadinejad said without elaborating.

Bin Laden was shot dead on May 2 in a US commando raid on a heavily fortified compound near Islamabad, Pakistan.

On May 4, Iranian Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi too had cast doubt on bin Laden’s death, saying there were “ambiguities” over the way he was killed

[Continues at The Times Of India]

Christopher Hitchens Vs. Noam Chomsky on Osama Bin Laden

vulcan — Sun, 15 May 2011 23:23:58 +0000

Hitchens Photo: Trockennasenaffe (CC) / Chomsky Photo: Duncan Rawlinson (CC)

Christopher Hitchens takes issue with Noam Chomsky’s recent Guernica article in Slate:

Anybody visiting the Middle East in the last decade has had the experience: meeting the hoarse and aggressive person who first denies that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center and then proceeds to describe the attack as a justified vengeance for decades of American imperialism.

This cognitive dissonance — to give it a polite designation — does not always take that precise form. Sometimes the same person who hails the bravery of al-Qaida’s martyrs also believes that the Jews planned the “operation.” As far as I know, only leading British “Truther” David Shayler, a former intelligence agent who also announced his own divinity, has denied that the events of Sept. 11, 2001, took place at all. (It was apparently by means of a hologram that the widespread delusion was created on television.)

In his recent article for Guernica magazine, however, professor Noam Chomsky decides to leave that central question open. We have no more reason to credit Osama Bin Laden’s claim of responsibility, he states, than we would have to believe Chomsky’s own claim to have won the Boston Marathon.

Read: Noam Chomsky’s recent Guernica article

Read: Christopher Hitchens’ recent Slate article

Disney Trademarks ‘Seal Team 6′

bluemana — Sun, 15 May 2011 17:59:25 +0000

Alex Weprin writes on FishBowlNY:

In a perfect example of a big media company looking to capitalize on current events, The Walt Disney Company has trademarked “Seal Team 6,” which also happens to be the name of the elite special forces team that killed Osama Bin Laden.

The trademark applications came on May 3rd, two days after the operation that killed Bin Laden… and two days after “Seal Team 6″ was included in thousands of news articles and TV programs focusing on the operation.

Disney’s trademark applications for “Seal Team 6″ cover clothing, footwear, headwear, toys, games and “entertainment and education services,” among other things.

Osama Bin Wankin’

majestic — Sat, 14 May 2011 22:23:43 +0000

Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post once again demonstrates that his tabloid “newspapers” (he owns The Sun in the UK among others) are in a class of their own when it comes to cover headlines.

In addition to this classy example, the Post suggests that some of the titles in Osama’s porn collection include:

Talibuns
Oral Qaeda
1,000 Arabians In One Night
Debbie Does Abbotabad

… and the list goes on. Makes you wonder what’s in Rupert’s own collection…

Osama Had Gigantic Porn Stash In Compound

JacobSloan — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:40:52 +0000

I’m slightly skeptical of this story — not because I can’t imagine Osama bin Laden having a propensity for porn, but because the military would be saying it regardless of whether or not it were true. The Los Angeles Times notes the breaking geopolitical news:

It appears Osama bin Laden may not have been totally disconnected electronically. Despite reports that he didn’t have Internet connection or mobile service, Pentagon officials say the Navy SEALs found pornography — and a lot of it — at Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consisting of “modern, electronically recorded video.”

No word on how it got there. But some analysts are speculating it may have been transferred by thumb-sized flash drives that he used to send emails while in hiding. Or it could’ve been through the satellite television that he used to watch Al Jazeera.

Taliban Terry Arrested In Ireland For Obama Death Threat

majestic — Fri, 13 May 2011 13:36:24 +0000

Is there a nuttier Irishman than Khalid Kelly, a/k/a Taliban Terry? He’s one of the main characters in Stephen Marshall’s acclaimed documentary Holy Wars (see trailer below), and is now vowing revenge for the killing of Osama bin Laden. Via AP:

Police arrested Ireland’s most notorious Muslim convert Thursday over his reported death threats against President Barack Obama.

Police said Khalid Kelly, a 44-year-old dubbed “Taliban Terry” by Dubliners, was arrested at his Dublin residence on suspicion of threatening to kill the U.S. leader. He could be held for up to three days before being charged or released.

The arrest came 10 days before Obama’s arrival in Ireland and four days after a British newspaper, the Sunday Mirror, printed an interview with Kelly. He is Ireland’s most outspoken supporter of al-Qaida and its slain founder, Osama bin Laden.

Kelly was quoted as telling the newspaper that he expected al-Qaida to kill Obama during his visit to Ireland in part because the country’s police force is poorly armed. The article said Kelly would like to kill Obama himself but was too well-known to police here.

“Personally I would feel happy if Obama was killed. How could I not feel happy when a big enemy of Islam is gone?” Kelly was quoted as saying.

Obama is scheduled to spend May 23 in Dublin and the village of Moneygall, ancestral home of a great-great-great-grandfather who emigrated to the United States in 1850. Ireland is already ramping up a security operation involving 10,000 police and troops to protect both him and Queen Elizabeth II, who arrives Tuesday in Ireland for a four-day visit.

Kelly, a former Catholic altar boy from inner-city Dublin, converted to Islam while imprisoned in Saudi Arabia in 2000 for selling illegal alcohol…

[continues at AP]

The CIA Created Fake Drunken, Gay Osama Campfire Video

JacobSloan — Thu, 12 May 2011 15:18:20 +0000

What a sitcom pilot it would have made. Via Parapolitical:

A post on the Washington Post’s defunct blog “Spy Talk” from May of 2010 detailed the CIA’s plans to produce fake Osama bin Laden videos.

Yesterday, the BBC reported on neighbors of the alleged Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad expressing skepticism as to the authenticity of videos released by the White House purporting to show Osama bin Laden watching television.

Osama Is Dead, But Congress Wants a Wider War…

vulcan — Wed, 11 May 2011 01:02:22 +0000

For all of you who chanted “USA! USA!” the night of the night of 1/2 May, if you are truly patriotic, you’ll ask what the hell is going on NOW. Spencer Ackerman writes in WIRED’s Danger Room:

Osama bin Laden is dead. 9/11 was ten years ago. So it’s not the most obvious time for a key congressional panel to expand the war on terrorism.

But that’s exactly what a section of the fiscal 2012 defense bill proposes to do. The so-called “Chairman’s Mark” of the bill, currently before the House Armed Services Committee, wants to update the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, to reflect that the al-Qaida of the present day is way different than the organization that attacked the U.S. on 9/11.

While the original Authorization tethered the war to those directly or indirectly responsible for 9/11, the new language authorizes “an armed conflict with al-Qaida, the Taliban, and associated forces,” as “those entities continue to pose a threat to the United States and its citizens.”

To its supporters, the proposal catches Congress up to the reality of today’s war. There aren’t many al-Qaida members in Afghanistan, but the war there rages onward. Meanwhile, the Obama administration wages a series of secret wars against al-Qaida entities in Pakistan and Yemen. Since last fall, Rep. Buck McKeon, the chairman of the committee, has argued that Congress, which hasn’t voted on the war in a decade, needs to go on record approving or disapproving of the 2011-era war. Essentially, his proposal would bring the secret wars in from the cold.

Bin Laden Operation Featured In Two Video Games

HAL9000 — Mon, 09 May 2011 22:21:26 +0000

This didn’t take long … Stephen Johnson reports on G4’s The Feed:

This Saturday, Kuma games released their Osama Bin Laden chapter in Kuma War. There’s also a Counter-Strike map so players can relive the glorious victory of the U.S. over the terrorist leader again and again in their homes.To be fair, the Counter-Strike map is simply a recreation of Osama’s hideout, not a full fledged, “let’s kill Osama” game, but it’s still interesting, both in terms of how quickly the game and map appeared, and in terms of what they say about how we feel about war.

Osama Bin Laden: Myths of Villainy and Deceit

James Curcio — Sun, 08 May 2011 17:48:10 +0000

Commentary on the subject of the week, on Modern Mythology:

This is how it works with terrorism, by definition. Our own psychology works against us. Fear, a popular tool of the Bush administration, was used to do a real disservice to their own “war on terror” by painting the picture of this guy hanging out in his underground bunker with Destro, Cobra Commander, and The Joker. (That is should they ever hope to win a “war on terror” — I assume they actually intend to “win” as much as the “war on drugs” could ever be won, as we meanwhile prop up the regimes that supply the materials).

Recent reports say Osama didn’t have a gun. But that’s almost beside the point, since the deed is done and it’s not likely we’re going to be seeing criminal investigations in the assassination of a figure like Osama Bin Laden. In the end he did share at least one thing in common with Saddam Hussein — both of them were tools for US interests for a time, and unlike puppet dictators, these used their own horrific means to their own ends and thus ‘had to be stopped.’ But in a National sense, maybe in an international sense, the blood is on all our hands, and it has been for a long time.

This might seem like an odd thing to say. Obviously none of us flew planes into any buildings. But yet in taking pride in violence, we’re strengthening a narrative of vengeance. There’s a MLK quote going around that had a different line added to the beginning of it. But the line from it, that is MLK, which I believe is the most relevant is this:

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

So it isn’t about whether it was right or wrong to kill him. We can have that debate, but the point when that debate was relevant happened in the situation room. I’m personally uncomfortable with the precedent of political assassination without a trial, but I can see how it becomes a moral imperative in very specific situations.

Aaron Sorkin played with this theme in the assassination of Abdul ibn Shareef plot arc of the West Wing (excerpt of a scene). No matter which side you come out on, it’s a hoary mess, but it’s patently clear to me that it’s barbaric to party in the streets over the death of any human. Even an enemy.

Osama Bin Laden Home Videos Released By Pentagon

bluemana — Sun, 08 May 2011 02:43:40 +0000

Where’s Bob Saget? Via MSNBC:

Video footage taken from Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, shows the terrorist leader watching news coverage of himself on television.

The five U.S. government-selected clips offer the first public glimpse at bin Laden’s life behind the walls of his compound in suburban Pakistan. The videos include outtakes of his propaganda films and, taken together, portray him as someone obsessed with his own image and how he is portrayed to the world.

A senior intelligence officer described the information seized from the compound as “the single largest collection” of senior terrorist material ever, NBC News reported. The videos were seized by Navy SEALs after bin Laden was killed Monday.

On the Death of Osama and the Rise of the Magic Brooms

Aaron Dames — Sat, 07 May 2011 22:08:25 +0000

Mickey Fantasia Fountain, Disneyland Paris. (CC)

Via Aaron Dames: Observations on Nature and Humanity:

The end excuses any evil. — Sophocles, Electra

Read what’s presented to you the same way you would read Iraqi Propaganda. — Noam Chomsky, Imperial Ambitions

For the liberation of a people more is needed than economic policy, more than industry: if a people is to become free, it needs pride and willpower, defiance, hate, hate and once again hate. — Adolf Hitler, Munich speech, April 10, 1923

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Why do we kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong? — From a bumper sticker

Jesus Christ would slap the shit of out you. — Another bumper sticker

This week President Obama visited the World Trade Center due to the death of Osama Bin Laden. The murder of this madman has already been celebrated by volumes of children and college students — cheering like barbarian lunatics — as though having won a football game or beaten a difficult level in a video game. If when speaking, President Obama were to hoist a chest upon the podium and from it draw the decapitated head of Bin Laden, the crowd would go wild. (Were there not initial reports of Obama crowd surfing after the news broke out in front of the White House? Pictures of Obama holding the meaty head, the people drinking the blood?)

The reaction of the bread and circus throngs should not come as a surprise. In the effort to catch Bin Laden, the US military, funded by US tax payers (they couldn’t have done it without us), has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians (were you keeping track?), and it’s not even over. Much like Goethe’s Sorcerers Apprentice (perhaps better depicted by Disney), many tiny Bin Ladens have been created in the process of destroying the original.

Americans celebrating the death of a murderer should be expected in a country that has explosive violent crime and incarceration rates (as a reminder, the US and Japan are the only countries in the “industrialized world” where governments execute their own citizens), a country steered by a trigger-happy military which accounts for 40% of the world’s military budget. As with the Iraqis who cheered as American contractors hung from a bridge in Fallujah, or as with the Somalis whom cheered as they dragged a dead US marine through the streets of Mogadishu, Americans (at least many in NYC and DC, presumably two “progressive” cosmopolitan hubs) celebrating the death of an enemy is a natural outcome of a society which views revenge as reconciliation, or at least as an excuse to party (the clear difference in these comparisons is the absence of Osama bin Laden’s slain body, which was apparently buried at sea … I have the boat they used to do this with and I can sell it to you, especially if you think we’ll be leaving Iraq or Afghanistan anytime soon. But Americans are by no means immune to glorifying murder when a physical corpse is present, one only needs to view the photographs of soldiers and kill teams smiling over the tortured and dead bodies Iraqis and Afghanis to understand this). Why is it that, chances are, you think that we should aspire to react with more civility to death of Bin Laden? I think the answer ultimately has something to do with the survival of our species.

It is noteworthy that the police broke up the party in Lafayette Park in DC. The police state that has emerged in the United States since 9/11 may have been intended to protect civilians from terrorists, but its function has extended to monitoring, controlling, and terrorizing the very people it claims to protect. Just as the decision to be mired in various was of aggression has been that of America’s choosing, the elimination of our civil liberties and constitutional rights has also been our choice — Osama Bin Laden did not enact or extend the PATRIOT ACT, he didn’t set up the TSA body scanners, he didn’t set up and then not close Guantanamo Bay and other detention centers. Yet the death of Bin Laden seems to lend legitimacy to the actions, strategies, and systems used as a means to kill him. It seems to legitimize the police state, the predator drone strikes on untried civilians, the torture and detention of innocent men, the billions of dollars exhausted by the military-industrial complex, the countless violations of law, and the idea of offensive violence as practical solution to our problems. In bringing the American public Bin Laden’s head, the power structure shall receive a stamp of approval for the countless vile steps it has taken over the past ten years, and the green light to proceed in driving down the road to hell. Don’t condone evil, don’t let them perpetuate it, don’t let them make you think that they’re okay.

History scholars are mainly attributed with sometimes pointing out that if the allied powers were to have lost WWII, then a different reversed version of the Nuremberg Trials would have taken place, and that the leaders of the US, UK, and USSR would have been the ones tried and hung for war crimes.

For the record: Questioning the government doesn’t make you a conspiracy theorist, but not questioning the government does make you an idiot.

— Aaron Dames

Samurai Sword-Wielding Bin Laden Hunter, Gary Faulkner, Demands Share of U.S. Reward

BananaFamine — Sat, 07 May 2011 18:18:19 +0000

“I’m not greedy, but I sold everything I had and I put my life on the line.” Via Fox News:

DENVER, Colo.— A samurai sword-wielding American who waged his own personal quest to capture Usama bin Laden demanded Tuesday a share of the official $27 million reward following the terror chief’s death.

Gary Faulkner, a construction worker from Greeley, Colo., who came to international attention after being arrested in Pakistan last year, told ABC News he had served the Al Qaeda leader “up on a platter” for U.S. authorities.

“I had a major hand and play in this wonderful thing, getting him out of the mountains and down to the valleys … Someone had to get him out of there. That’s where I came in,” he said. “I scared the squirrel out of his hole, he popped his head up and he got capped.

“I’m proud of our boys, I’m very proud of our government … They were handed this opportunity on a platter from myself.”

For more information, see original article.

Media Roots Radio – Bin Laden’s Death: Government Propaganda, CIA Ties, Mindless Nationalism

Abby Martin — Sat, 07 May 2011 17:56:45 +0000

Via Media Roots:

Robbie and Abby Martin of Media Roots cover Osama Bin Laden’s timely death in this edition of Media Roots Radio. They break apart the government and media propaganda, expose Bin Laden’s CIA ties, dissect his role as boogyman for the War on Terror and comment on the mindless nationalism and lack of critical thinking from fellow Americans following the news of his death.

Listen to last week’s broadcast about Fukushima: Coverage and Break Down of Radiation, another broadcast about Libya, Nuclear Power, Religious Environmentalism, or an inerview where Two Active Duty Soldiers Speak Out.

Reuters Publishes Photos of Raid on Osama Bin Laden’s Abbottabad Compound

vulcan — Sat, 07 May 2011 00:52:11 +0000

There are no photos of Osama Bin Laden (yet…). Note the photos are graphic. Via Reuters:

Photographs acquired by Reuters and taken about an hour after the U.S. assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan show three dead men lying in pools of blood, but no weapons.

The photos, taken by a Pakistani security official who entered the compound after the early morning raid on Monday, show two men dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths. (More at Reuters)

Osama Was Crazy About American Soft Drinks, Apparently

JacobSloan — Fri, 06 May 2011 16:11:33 +0000

A nugget from a Bloomberg article — Abbottabad shopkeepers say that the men revealed to be bin Laden’s aides would regularly purchase bulk quantities of both Pepsi and Coke. It seems his hatred for the infidels was matched only by his love for our sweet, sweet carbonated colas.

The two polite Pakistanis who helped Osama bin Laden hide in the shadow of their country’s army bought bulk food orders, chose major brands and equally favored Pepsi and Coke, neighbors and a local shopkeeper said.

The men called themselves Akbar and Rashid Khan and they owned the fortified home where U.S. commandos killed bin Laden in an early morning raid May 2. They did the daily shopping in the Pashtu-language accents of Waziristan, a region on the Afghan border, said grocer Anjum Qaisar, 27, who works 150 meters from the compound.

“I was curious about why they bought so much food, but I did not want to be rude by asking” such a personal question, Qaisar said.

Al-Qaeda Confirms Death Of Osama Bin Laden

majestic — Fri, 06 May 2011 14:35:32 +0000

The jihadis vow to take revenge, of course, posting messages on extremist websites saying that Al-Qaeda will remain “a curse chasing the Americans and their agents.” Peter Walker reports for the Guardian:

Al-Qaida has confirmed the death of its leader, Osama bin Laden, and vowed vengeance, pledging in a statement posted on militant websites that his blood “will not be wasted”.

In what is apparently the first official reaction from the militant Islamist group since Bin Laden was gunned down by US special forces troops who raided his hideout in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, the group called on the people of Pakistan, “where Sheik Osama was killed”, to rise up against their leaders.

The group would soon release an audio message from Bin Laden recorded a week before his death, said the statement, dated 3 May and signed by “the general leadership of al-Qaida”. There was no independent confirmation that the message was authentic but it was posted on websites through which al-Qaida habitually issues statements.

It continued: “We stress that the blood of the holy warrior sheikh, Osama bin Laden, God bless him, is precious to us and to all Muslims and will not go in vain.

“We will remain, God willing, a curse chasing the Americans and their agents, following them outside and inside their countries. Soon, God willing, their happiness will turn to sadness, their blood will be mingled with their tears.”

The statement came as US intelligence officials said Bin Laden had remained in close touch with the rest of the al-Qaida network from his safe house and had continued to plot potential terrorist attacks, including one against the US railway system…

[continues in the Guardian]

Nailing Bin Laden: Was It A Military Or A Media Operation?

Danny Schechter — Fri, 06 May 2011 13:28:42 +0000

The tip on bin Laden’s whereabouts came in back in 2010. You have to assume the house was under surveillance. If they thought they “bagged him” they would be watching closely and choosing the right time to deep six the target (I actually wrote this lead paragraph sentence before reading this “Breaking News” from the Washington Post: “CIA had secret outpost in Abbottabad”).

“The CIA maintained a safe house in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for a small team of spies who conducted extensive surveillance over a period of months on the compound where Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. special operations forces this week (U.S. officials).”

Both Afghan agents and Pakistani intelligence now say they told the US about the house as early as 2001.

So, they knew he was there. That was a reason drones weren’t used.

The CIA wanted a more controlled high profile and dramatic intervention for public consumption, for what, in the end, was a marketing campaign— marketing the centrality of the agency’s role in a war whose main audience is not on the battlefield, but in the homeland.

They needed a heroic narrative to revive support for a war they have been losing, and a scalp to sell to a conflict-weary and disillusioned population. It is no surprise that the Seals labeled UBL “Geronimo” reviving memories of fighting guerilla-style Indian wars. Muslim renegades are apparently our new “savages.”

The Native Americans took their enemy’s head and hair—Donald Trump, beware; we shoot out their eyes and waterboard their brains.

The target was not “the terror mastermind” but the American people. It was an exercise in political mobilization and perception management. It was the ultimate media operation, relying on many of the tactics used in Iraq that I document in my film WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception.

We are as conscious about what we say as what we do, we always fashion a propaganda storyline demonizing the enemy who is often compared to Hitler. Bin Laden lived in a “million dollar mansion” (It cost $48,000 to buy six years ago). He was heavily armed (he wasn’t). He hid behind female human shields (he didn’t). Who cares about facts… this was a TV orchestrated event. The Daily Mail in London complained that their raising questions led to being derided as “cheese eating surrender monkeys.”

They could have captured him, but that would lead to the hassle of putting him on trial. Besides, what if he revealed his long connection with the CIA and US officials? Can’t have that. So the kill order was given, along with a quick disposal of the body, mafia-style (as in “sleeping with the fishes).”

The legal justification was self-defense, an argument that any government can use to dispatch its enemies.

Why was it done, and why now?

It was certainly not because Al-Qaeda is ascendant. Our experts believe only 100 of them remain in Afghanistan, where their capacity has been diminished. Remember: Al-Qaeda is not a centralized top-down machine but a decentralized and sophisticated network.

We can only surmise all the factors, but the larger context here has fallen away with the focus on the narrowness of the dirty details, many calculated to inspire enthusiasm for the bravery and heroism of the death squad, but not any reflection of the strategy and larger context of the events.

Even as the cover stories about what happened fell away into the foggy soup of covert action and its contradictions, it devolved into to a case of excuses about haste– ‘he said that but didn’t mean it’. Even as the raid inspires mass euphoria and self-righteous blood lust, the full meaning of it is missing in a media that is much better at the how than the why.

First of all, this operation reflected the reorganization of the national security state with the CIA taking over from the soldiers. This operation was Leon Panetta’s last hurrah as Spook-in Chief before he uses his covert ops portfolio to takeover the Pentagon.

Second, that most hyped soldier’s soldier, Generalissimo David Petraeus, who has failed to end the insurgency in Afghanistan (and who is now warring on Pakistan) is being moved into Panetta’s job. A Navy Seal Commander has now been promoted to the Central Command.

The bottom line: public accountability and open disclosure has become a thing of the past. No wonder the ongoing campaign to ‘get WikiLeaks’ before it exposes more secrets.

As the military privatizes wars, and, in effect, goes underground, there is a recognition that, despite the size of our forces and the power of our technology, we have, in effect, been losing to peasants with suicide belts and unconventional tactics we continually underestimate.

Writes former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts,

“Americans are too busy celebrating to think, a capability that seems to have been taken out of their education.

“Americans are so enthralled over the death of bin Laden that they do not wonder why information gleamed years ago would take so long to locate a person who was allegedly living in a million-dollar building equipped with all the latest communication equipment next to the Pakistani Military Academy. Allegedly, the “most wanted criminal” was not moving from hide-out to hide-out in desolate mountains, but ensconced in luxury quarters in broad daylight. Nevertheless, despite his obvious location, it took the CIA years to find him after claiming to have gained information of his whereabouts out of captives in secret prisons. This is the image of the CIA as the new Keystone Cops.”

Like the Canadian Mounties, in the end, Navy Seal Unit 6, armed with lethal weapons and an attack dog, got their man—with not inconsiderable collateral damage—in what the New York Times called an “extremely one-sided encounter.”

It was, let’s admit, a liquidation, right out of the KGB playbook.

Politically— and yes, there was a political agenda here too: the bin Laden operation was part of a chain of calculated presidential promoting exercises including the announcement of his re-election campaign and massive fund-raising effort, his deals with the Repugs on the budget, the release of his birth certificate, his interview with Oprah, his shakeup of sorts of the Pentagon, his bringing the CEO of GE and William Daley into the White House, on and on.

The “new” Obama wants to be seen as a warrior, not a wuss, as long as he is not forced to go after Wall Street. Right now, his victory is viewed widely for what it is; vengeance. Or in the words of the street, “payback.”

Nailing Bin-Laden has to be seen in the context of his Spring offensive grounded in symbolic advances, to get his poll numbers up and his campaign rolling, to make him look invincible, and to “triangulate,” by moving to the center and pre-empting/co-opting the right. He now has Bush and Cheney praising him.

Concludes Roberts,

“Obama needed closure of the Afghan war and occupation in order to deal with the US budget deficit. Subsequent statements from Obama regime officials suggest that the agenda might be to give Americans a piece of war victory in order to boost their lagging enthusiasm. The military/security complex will become richer and more powerful, and Americans will be rewarded with vicarious pleasure in victory over enemies.”

Adds Tom Engelhardt,

“Consider it an insult to irony, but the world bin Laden really changed forever wasn’t in the Greater Middle East. It was here. Cheer his death, bury him at sea, don’t release any photos, and he’ll still carry on as a ghost as long as Washington continues to fight its deadly, disastrous wars in his old neighborhood.”

Disclosure: In case you wonder, I am not now nor have I ever been a supporter, sympathizer or rationalizer of Usama bin Laden’s violent Jihad. The fact that I feel I have to even write this should give readers insight into the climate of permissible discussion. I am not unhappy to see UBL moving on to the next world, even as some believe he really died long ago. I agree: Good Riddance, but we need to analyze this event more closely. Will it help end the war or will “our success” convince the Pentagon it needs to be expanded? The issues of the raid’s legality need to be discussed.

Filmmaker and News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org.

For more on his film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time and companion book The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big To Jail, visit plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.

Texas Teacher To 9th Grade Student: “I Bet You’re Grieving About Your Uncle (Bin Laden)”

BananaFamine — Fri, 06 May 2011 12:16:03 +0000

ABC 13 reports:

HOUSTON (KTRK) — The death of Osama bin Laden is related to an investigation of a teacher at Clear Brook High School. The teacher is accused of making a racially insensitive comment to a student in front of the entire class.

A Friendswood mom says she was offended by what her daughter says happened Monday in ninth grade algebra.

She said, “The teacher told the student that ‘I bet you’re grieving.’ And she basically looked at him and said what are you talking about? And he said I heard about your uncle’s death and she said wow, because she understood that he was referring about Osama bin Laden being killed and was racially profiling her.”

The remark was made to a classmate, an American-born girl of Muslim faith. It happened at Clear Brook High School in the Clear Creek Independent School District. The mom wanted to speak out about the incident but wanted us to protect her identity, saying she doesn’t want any retaliation against her daughter or the girl who experienced the inappropriate comment.

For more information, see original article.